My 2009 Intel mini is stuck on the grey apple logo start-up screen. I get the spinning loading cirlce, but it just sits there. I have the mini set to enter a password upon waking from sleep and last night when I went to wake up the machine I had the spinning beachball. After waiting for several minutes I shut the mini off and that is when the problem started.

I have tried resetting the pram, holding the d key, the c key, the shift key, command v and nothing works. I hear the chime when I first power it back on, but again cannot get past the start-up screen.

I do not have the snow leopard install cd, plus the optical drive died several months ago. I do have an external cd drive.

I have an external hd I use for time machine back-ups, but I cannot seem to get to a screen where I can load a time machine back-up.

Pressing the option key did bring up an icon of my internal HD with an arrow beneath pointing up. When I click on the arrow it goes to the grey logo screen and gets stuck again. I was hoping I could load a backup from my time machine HD but I cannot seem to be able to access it. I'm beginning to worry that my mini might be toast and I don't want that to happen._________________2009 mini - 4gb RAM and 500gb 7200 rpm HD

I finally solved the problem with my mac mini by buying a new macbook pro with retina display!

The hard drive bricked on my mini and I could not get anything to work to solve the problem. After deciding it was not worth the trouble to pry open the mini and replace the hard dive, a new portable macbook seemed like a good idea. I hooked up my time machine drive and next thing I know I'm using my new macbook pro just like I was my mini. Gotta love the simplicity in that!

I will miss my mini as it was my first experience using a mac and I do not think I will be going back to using a windows machine at home ever again. OS X Mavericks has a lot for me to lean coming from Snow Leopard and I like what I'm seeing so far.

I spent a lot of time lurking on the forums here before I decided to purchase my 2009 mac mini and I'm glad I did. Things have slowed down around here since then, but I have always thought this was one of the better forum communities around. I'm sure I will continue to visit often and learn more and even help out every once and awhile.

Now you're up and running again with your new MBP, it might be worth re-visiting your mini, and indeed: prying it open, install new HD, recreate OS from the grey disks, and you'll have a useful (and saleable) nice "new" mini?_________________Martin at HeadSpin HD now on Blu-ray

Now you're up and running again with your new MBP, it might be worth re-visiting your mini, and indeed: prying it open, install new HD, recreate OS from the grey disks, and you'll have a useful (and saleable) nice "new" mini?

That is a good idea. Pardon my ignorance, but what are grey disks? I'm not sure if I have the Snow Leopard install disks._________________2009 mini - 4gb RAM and 500gb 7200 rpm HD